A fungal disease has devastated amphibian populations around the world, but researchers believe they have discovered a virus that could attack the fungus and put an end to the pandemic.
In a study published in Current Biology, biologists describe the discovery of a virus that infects the Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis fungus, or Bd. They believe it could be engineered to combat the disease.
Bd has contributed to the decline of over 500 amphibian species, and 90 possible extinctions including the yellow-legged mountain frog (Rana muscosa) in the Sierras and the Panamanian golden frog (Atelopus zeteki).
Researchers discovered the virus when they were studying the genetics of the fungus and found some DNA sequences bore the hallmarks of a viral genome. They hope to clone the virus and see if a manually infected strain of Bd produces fewer spores.
“We are hoping to assist nature in taking its course,” said study author Mark Yacoub, a microbiology doctoral student at the University of California, Riverside.
The Wildlife Society commented on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s proposed policy changes and new regulations that take into account climate change and habitat loss in the management of the National Wildlife Refuge System (NWRS).
The USFWS seeks public comment on proposed revisions to existing policy and new regulations aimed at maintaining, restoring and enhancing the biological integrity, diversity and environmental health—or BIDEH—of the NWRS. The regulations and updated policy aim to address current conservation challenges and ensure the BIDEH of the Refuge System amidst increasing threats to global biodiversity. The Wildlife Society recently submitted its feedback supporting revisions that acknowledge climate change and habitat loss as pivotal factors in refuge management but also highlighted areas for improvement.
The USFWS issued the original BIDEH policy for the NWRS in 2001, providing guidance for maintaining the ecological integrity of the Refuge System. The agency is proposing updates to management directives and definitions in the current policy to better reflect the interconnected nature of refuge ecosystems and the challenges that threats like climate change pose. In the revised policy, refuge managers are directed to prioritize natural processes, ecological connectivity, and adaptation strategies in habitat management.
TWS recognizes the global threat to biodiversity and supports the intent of the USFWS policy revisions to better conserve and manage BIDEH across the National Wildlife Refuge System. In its comments to the USFWS, TWS emphasized the importance of adaptively managing novel ecosystems and incorporating flexibility into management plans, aligning with the Resist-Accept-Direct (RAD) framework of management.
TWS also voiced its support for the directive to address climate change across the NWRS, emphasizing the significant impacts of human-caused climate change on wildlife populations. The Society’s comments also stressed the importance of retaining prescribed fire as a critical management tool for maintaining and restoring ecosystems, suggesting that specific language in the policy may unnecessarily limit refuge managers’ ability to effectively use prescribed fire.
The revised BIDEH policy and corresponding regulations also outline management activities intended to enhance BIDEH across the Refuge System. These include native predator control, conservation translocations, the use of genetically engineered organisms, invasive species management, pesticide use, agricultural uses and mosquito control.
In response, TWS expressed concerns over the lack of clarity in defining “predator” and “native,” advocating for ecologically based definitions to guide wildlife management decisions across NWRS refuges. The Society further advocated for a science-based approach to decision-making, flexibility in managing BIDEH while considering the needs of individual refugees, and greater staff capacity for conservation planning.
“National wildlife refuges help connect Americans to a diverse array of public lands, while also serving as a crucial means of protecting wildlife and conserving habitat,” said Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland in a press release.
The public can submit comments on the proposed rule and revisions to USFWS by an updated extended deadline of May 6, 2024. TWS continues to support the planning, funding, and management of wildlife refuges as a Cooperative Alliance for Refuge Enhancement (CARE) member.
This article was updated on 4/11/2024 to clarify TWS’ position on the proposed policy.
The Wildlife Society Bulletin is accepting manuscripts for a special issue focused on research that will be presented at the National Wild Turkey Federation symposium in December 2025.
“The entire issue will be devoted to the turkey symposium,” said David Haukos, the editor for the special section.
The National Wild Turkey Federation has put on a symposium spotlighting the latest wild turkey research about every five years since 1959. At the most recent symposium in 2022, organizers decided to fast-track the next gathering, due to increased attention on the species as turkey populations in several states dwindle.
“There’s probably more wild turkey research going on right now in the country than there every has been,” said Mark Hatfield, director of conservation services for the NWTF. He hopes the symposium can help state wildlife agencies respond to dwindling populations.
“Many states are reinvigorating their research priorities and their focus,” he said.
Decisions regarding accepted manuscripts will be made no later than Sept. 1, 2025.
For past symposiums, manuscripts were later published in standalone publications. After the 2022 symposium, manuscripts were compiled and published in the June 2022 issue of the Wildlife Society Bulletin. For the upcoming 13th symposium in Kansas City, Missouri, the submission process for the first time includes both the symposium and the journal.
Researchers are invited to submit manuscripts on any topic related to wild turkey ecology and management for consideration by Nov. 1, 2024.
“Any individual who wants to present or provide an oral presentation at the symposium will have to have an accepted paper within the proceedings or within the special issue,” Haukos said. “If, for some reason, the submitted manuscript is not accepted for inclusion in this special issue, then the symposium organizers intend to reach out to those authors to provide poster presentations.”
Because articles in the WSB are now open access, presenters now have an “open exchange of information” they didn’t have in the past, Hatfield said. “This also helps with recognition of what’s going on with wild turkeys and their overall importance, and it can drive opportunities for further engagement.”
A new program is encouraging farmers in New Brunswick to leave part of their lands for conservation. The Resilient Agricultural Landscape Program uses Canadian provincial and federal funding to reward farmers for leaving sections of their farms untilled and protecting waterways, wetlands and pollinator habitats.
“This program will help incentivize farmers to further enhance their environmental stewardship for the benefit of everyone,” New Brunswick Agriculture Minister Margaret Johnson said.
The program follows similar efforts in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island.
A person in Texas has contracted avian flu after being in contact with infected dairy cattle in the state. The person, whose only symptom is reported to be eye redness, is the second known case of a human contracting the H5N1 virus in the U.S.
Since 2022, the World Health Organization cases has reported 15 cases in Asia, including eight deaths. The Centers for Disease Control still consider the risk to people to be low, but people in close or prolonged exposure to infected animals are at greater risk. The previous case involved a person exposed to infected poultry in Colorado in 2022.
“Spread of earlier H5N1 viruses from one infected person to a close contact in the past have happened very rarely and have not led to sustained person-to-person spread,” the CDC said.
The H5N1 strain of highly pathogenic avian influenza has affected populations of wild birds around the world, resulting in the deaths of dozens of highly endangered California condors and hundreds of bald eagles and devastating some waterfowl populations. It has also resulted in the destruction of millions of farmed chickens and turkeys in an effort to contain the virus.
A variety of mammals, including seals, sea lions, foxes and other carnivores believed to have consumed infected birds, have also been infected.
The Texas case occurred after the discovery of the virus for the first time in the U.S. among dairy cows in Texas and Kansas. The virus was found in a goat last month in Minnesota, marking the first occurrence in livestock in the U.S.
Alaska is testing a doglike robot to scare off wildlife at Fairbanks International Airport. Officials hope to deploy the robot—named Aurora—in the fall to discourage migrating birds and other animals from settling near airplanes.
Alaska obtained the $70,000 Boston Dynamics robot through a U.S. Agriculture Department grant. The robot has removeable panels that could allow it to be disguised as a coyote (Canis latrans) or fox as it makes hourly patrols to chase off waterfowl and other animals.
If the project works in Fairbanks, the state may send similar robots to more rural airports.
“The sole purpose of this is to act as a predator and allow for us to invoke that response in wildlife without having to use other means,” Alaska Department of Transportation program manager Ryan Marlow told state legislators.
Header Image: Alaska is planning to use a robot dog to keep wildlife away from airplanes at Fairbanks International Airport. Credit: Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities via Instagram
Raptors take advantage of plentiful black-tailed prairie dogs as they search for food along their winter migration routes, but plague and habitat loss are making the prey harder to come by.
“They’re losing a reliable food source, which potentially means they’re going to have to move more across the landscape,” said Courtney Duchardt, an associate professor at Oklahoma State University who has been studying prairie dogs for 10 years.
In a study published in the Journal of Raptor Research, she and her colleagues delved into a dataset collected between 1998 and 2002 in the Southern and Central Great Plains to find out what interactions the ecosystem engineers were having with bird species.
An adult prairie dog on a colony in southwestern Oklahoma. Credit: Courtney Duchardt
Researchers knew that some raptors, like ferruginous hawks (Buteo regalis) and golden eagles (Aquila chrysaetos), prey on black-tailed prairie dogs (Cynomys ludovicianus), but Duchardt and her colleagues found some surprising raptors were likely using a diet of prairie dogs to sustain themselves through the winter.
“In winter, [raptors] are going to be more flexible,” she said. “I think that’s probably why we saw a fairly strong effect, because in winter you just need food. You’re not as worried about your breeding habitat or your nesting habitat.”
A ferruginous hawk with a recently killed prairie dog is captured on a game camera in Thunder Basin National Grassland in Wyoming. Credit: Lauren Porensky
Bald eagles (Haliaeetus leucocephalus), which typically breed in riparian, tree-covered areas where prairie dogs are scarce, turned to the species as they wintered in the Great Plains. So did rough-legged hawks (B.lagopus), which breed in northern Canada but winter in the U.S.
“If you’re a predator, knowing where your food is and having that be predictable is great,” Duchardt said. “And all of those are true with prairie dogs.”
But Duchardt said that the opportunistic food resource might have once been even more abundant. Now, prairie dog populations have declined due to plague infections and the loss of grassland habitat.
“Obviously, there are other food resources, but this is a static and consistent diurnal food resource that doesn’t hibernate,” she said. “That is fairly rare.”
As enthusiasts prepare for Monday’s solar eclipse across a swath of North America, some scientists will be paying less attention to the movements of the sun and moon and more to the activities of wildlife.
“In 2017, another total solar eclipse crossed the United States from coast to coast, giving scientists a chance to study how animals responded across the path of totality,” Audubon writes. “And this year, more projects are set to add to this growing body of evidence.”
During the 2017 eclipse, observers submitted findings to the “Life Responds” citizen science project in the iNaturalist application. A team from the Cornell Lab or Ornithology—using weather radar data—found daytime birds came to rest as darkness fell. And NASA gathered audio recordings across the eclipse’s path. Efforts like those are expected to return again this year, including a 2024 Life Responds project and a NASA-backed Eclipse Soundscapes Project.
“We have a pretty good idea of what might generally occur,” Brent Pease, an ecologist at Southern Illinois University whose lab is partnering on the Eclipse Soundscapes project, told Audubon. “And here’s an opportunity for us to quantify that.”
Grizzly bears (Ursus arctos horribilis) are moving northward in Canada, raising concerns about how they—and their polar bear (Ursus maritimus) hybrids—may affect caribou (Rangifer tarandus).
Local hunters and biologists say the numbers of grizzlies and so-called “grolar bears” are on the rise, prompting local predator hunts to reduce their numbers.
Steve Baryluk, regional biologist for the Beaufort Delta with the N.W.T. government, said more grizzlies are seen in the region each year. “They’re pretty adaptable to a lot of different environments where they can make do with what they are able to find there,” he told the CBC.
Nine hybrid bears have been genetically identified. Researchers are now working on Victoria Island to see what the grizzlies prey on.
“There’s concerns that they may be targeting some of the caribou species that are under Species at Risk concerns at the moment, so we want to try to get a better handle on that,” he said.
Clark’s nutcrackers rarely forget a seed cache location. But many of the whitebark pines they depend on for food in Glacier National Park have disappeared, leaving the birds nearly a distant memory themselves.
“Glacier National Park is the epicenter of whitebark pine decline,” said Vladimir Kovalenko, a biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Whitebark pines have been suffering from a number of threats across their range, including climate change, wildfire and destruction by mountain pine beetles (Dendroctonus ponderosae). In Glacier National Park, white pine blister rust, a fungal pathogen that is also affecting the trees across their range, has hit particularly hard in recent years.
Kovalenko, who was a master’s student at the University of Montana at the time of this research, and his colleagues wanted to see how declines in these trees were affecting the population of Clark’s nutcrackers (Nucifraga columbiana) in the area. For a study published recently in Ecology and Evolution, the team compared nutcracker occupancy estimates to pine presence in different parts of the park.
Never forget
The Clark’s nutcrackers look unassuming—mostly gray with black and white wings. Their calls, similar to the screech of other corvids, cut through the forest. These birds have some of the most magnificent memories in the animal kingdom. They can hide pinecones in hundreds of unique caches, remembering where they put nearly all of them.
To estimate the population of the birds, the researchers used a combination of point count surveys and passive recording of nutcracker calls. They gathered data for three summers from 2020 to 2022 during the peak whitebark pinecone harvest season.
Whitebark pines are almost entirely reliant on nutcrackers to disperse their seeds. Credit: Vladimir Kovalenko
The team combined the data gathered from these two methods, and since these nutcrackers are rare in Glacier National Park, they used models to get a more accurate population estimate that takes the possibility of missed detections into account.
The researchers then compared the population estimates from the models to forest characteristics, including what types of trees were where. This analysis reinforced findings from previous research, such as the birds’ preference for dense whitebark pine copses.
“Clark’s nutcrackers were spending more time in areas with larger and more mature trees,” Kovalenko said.
Disappearing food source
Older whitebark pines produce more cones than younger, smaller trees. It usually takes over 50 years for these trees to begin producing cones, and upwards of 100 years to produce a particularly large crop of cones. As these old pines disappear, the nutcrackers may fly elsewhere, or switch to other food sources.
This lack of birds may also create a situation where whitebark pines themselves are unlikely to reproduce. Despite their sharp memories, Clark’s nutcrackers don’t remember every single cache. And they also sometimes die or leave the area before they can collect their hidden cones. As such, the birds act as seed dispersers for the trees. In turn, the whitebarks are almost completely reliant on nutcrackers for dispersal.
A whitebark pine cone. Credit: Vladimir Kovalenko
As mentioned in the cover feature of the March/April issue of The Wildlife Professional, if fewer trees means fewer birds, that also may mean fewer trees in the future. “There are fears that it’s going to produce this positive feedback loop,” Kovalenko said.
Kovalenko said this research reinforces the importance of conserving old growth whitebark pines. This kind of work might help retain Clark’s nutcrackers on the landscape, but other species like grizzly bears (Ursus arctos horribilis) also eat these pinecones. So what’s good for Clark’s nutcrackers is likely to be good for a host of other species.
